Twelve Relationship Myths

        1.      If we loved each other, we wouldn’t have any problems.  Relationships require self-knowledge, listening skills, problem solving skills, hard work, and the ability to relax and have fun.  With these resources, you will find your relationship much more likely to thrive.  Love alone is not enough.

     2.     If my partner really loved me, he/she would know what I want.  The more your partner gets to know you, the easier it will be to know many of your wishes.  However, sometimes we year to slip back to a very young phase of life when mother knew what our crying meant and would change our diaper, hold and cuddle us, or recognize you needed to get to bed soon.  Or we might have had an overly involved mother during our childhood and teenage years.  Since your partner has not been with you all of your life, he/she will probably need you to define the subtle nuances of the things you want.  Of course, even then you may find your partner not picking up on your expressed wish.  This can be quite disappointing and deserves to be explored in a time and space when both of you are in a relatively non-defensive place.

      3.     I have to say what I feel/You should say what you feel.  Saying much of what you feel helps partners to relate and make your relationship work.  However, sharing a negative feeling at the wrong time and/or in the wrong way may produce a very unhappy outcome.  One does not have to reveal feelings in any given moment.  Given in the wrong way can produce a lot of reactive defensiveness on your partner’s part.  In fact, such a bombshell may lead to a very unhappy, unproductive situation.  You can make a decision to hold onto the feelings until a good time for sharing, and you should make every effort to tell your partner when that will be.  Holding onto feelings until the right time can save a marriage/partnership.  However, repressing your feelings without ever exploring their negative impact on you can lead to anger and to distancing from your partner.

      4.     Getting out all of your feelings will strengthen your partnership.  Feelings need to be responded to with empathy and care.  Creative solutions need to be discovered.  Exploring all of your feelings in one sitting can be a script for disaster.  The middle of the night when you both are tired and exhausted is not the best time for creative barnstorming.  Often, problems will become less so as time goes by.  Talking about your feelings over a period of time will allow you both to recover and will allow what may be less important to fade.

             5.  If my partner would just change, our relationship would be great.  Most relationship counselors find both partners feel this way when therapy begins.  As you grow, you will learn that you can only change yourself.  You cannot change your partner’s behavior; only he/she can—if they want to.  Waiting until your partner changes simply is folly and not an effective way to improve your relationship.  Serenity comes from accepting that you cannot change your partner and exercising courage to change yourself and it is a process to know how to do that.  Looking for ways to develop your own self-understanding and your social skills can dramatically strengthen your partnership.

            6.  Unless my partner talks about his/her feelings, I will always feel like I do not know him/her.   Often, feeling-driven partners have a desperate need to hear about their partner’s feelings, and they spend wasted energy confronting the partner about how they “never share feelings.”  Many individuals—especially women—turn outward to express and to process their feelings.  Others—often men—turn inward to explore their own inner yearnings.  Some research even indicates that men are “hard wired” to be less in touch with their feelings.  Repeated confrontation around this subject leads to even more defensiveness and subsequent withdrawal.  Finding times to relax and share common visions and dreams leads to a more free-flowing exchange of thoughts and feelings. 

     7.   If she would just be more logical/rational, then at least we might get somewhere in this conversation.   Individuals are different.  You may have fallen in love with a partner who more easily accesses the part that you find most difficult.  So some men seem to “allow the spouse to do the feeling for them.”  Thinkers need to remember that to their opposites, feelings are facts and facts need to be gathered as a part of any decision making process.  Learning to listen all the way through what is being stated through active or reflective listening will provide a much more acceptable environment for your partner to the clarity of your logic.

     8.   The perfect partner could make my life complete.  The reality is that only you can make your life complete.  We may marry someone who does bring a new dimension to our lives and then believe that by “osmosis” we will absorb the trait of our partner.  But the hard work of sorting what you need in your life, identifying a way to get there, and setting things in motion remains entirely up to you.  You will make more progress by attempting to live your life to the fullest and inviting your partner to share and enjoy your life with you.

     9.    If he were just honest, I could deal with anything my partner did.  If one has been raised in a family where there was punishment for dishonesty, that person will probably wince or become angry at any discovery that their partner has been hiding something.  That person may even become an expert at pointing out ways that their partner may be in denial about their denial.  Other persons are raised in families where what mom and dad did not know kept them from being punished.  Withholding certain things in that context seemed like the smartest thing to do.  Once again the focus on “just being honest” can be a way of retreating into mutual defensiveness rather than looking at the roots of the deception and making it safe to be honest.

           10.     If we just had more sex, everything would be great.  Most couples experience a difference in sexual appetite.  For men, sometimes the demand to have sex becomes a way of resolving everything rather than looking at the deeper issues that need to be explored.  The man’s yearning to be more physical at times often misses the disconnection that the spouse may be feeling that keeps her from feeling emotionally close enough to enjoy having sex with him.  Truthfully, women crave emotional connection with their spouse and without it, she may feel pressured and feel anger if compelled or manipulated into having sex.  Sex is a delicate dance that requires great sensitivity on the part of both partners.

            11.    Never go to bed angry.  The middle of the night tends to be a poor time to be creative in problem solving or discerning the nuances of your partner’s feelings.  Some well-meaning authority figures in our lives sometimes share this admonition prior to marriage and couples feel the burden to stay up all night to work through an issue.  Either partner would do well to recognize the degree to which clarity does not seems to be emerging in a conversation.  Continuing to talk in this situation will likely lead to things being said that neither will want to remember the next day.  Couples should find relief in agreeing to a “ceasefire.”  If a partner tends to feel abandoned in such a circumstance, he/she will likely respond to setting a clear time and date for renewing the attempt to problem solve when both partners can think clearly.  This concept works during the day as well.  Giving a spouse hope for resolution of a problem through offering to revisit it at a specified time works wonders, but it is important that the appointment be kept when meaningful “win-win” solutions can be negotiated.

            12.     My partner had a physical or emotional affair because he/she is selfish and doesn’t love me anymore.  This is a very natural response to the discovery of an affair.  However, affairs happen for many reasons and mean very different things to different individuals. These differences can lie in cultural expectations, what one’s parent(s) did, or from a deep sense of loneliness.  It usually is a selfish act, but it is often a complicated act.

Often when one emerges out of the shell of an old sense of purpose, one often feels empty and does know what will make life seem exciting again.  Like a teenager, a partner does not know what might work but cannot imagine that a parent—or in this case a partner—will understand.  Again the pursuit of an affair can be a way to try to understand what one is searching for.

The reasons above do not excuse a partner from having had an affair because affairs have a devastating impact on most relationships, yet assuming that your partner no longer loves you may prove to be an erroneous perception.  There needs to be an exploration of what the partner who had the affair actually feels about the spouse, often best accommodated with the help of a therapist or clergy.  The betrayed spouse needs to observe if the partner acknowledges the tremendous breach of trust, wants to understand the pain, and is committed to sincerely rebuilding the relationship.  If such “turnabout” is sincere through actions, the relationship may well be salvageable and worth the effort it will take to rebuild it.  


Based upon a paper written by L. David Willoughby, MFT, RN, and edited by Robert Davis, MA, MFTI

Trying to Let Go

Yesterday, a friend of mine got a tattoo and sent a text to show it to me.  I am pleased that he sent it to me; I am quite confident that I was one of the first people to see it on him.  The tattoo, prominently placed on his left chest, is of the three intersecting circles, circles used by industry to connote that something is radioactive.  He had first gotten a temporary henna tattoo of the circles to determine what kind of reaction he might receive to such an adornment.  He talked to me and others about its implications, and at length decided to get a real one. 

Not a lot of my friends have tattoos.  Nor are many of my friends gay.  But he is now tattooed, he is gay, and he is also HIV-positive, and is a wonderful person.  I care for him.

Reflecting back on my earlier years, I believe that I have not always been so open-minded.  My sheltered and religious upbringing in Utah kept me somewhat insulated from “the world.”  I was really innocent when I was sent to Argentina as a missionary for nearly two years, and only slightly less so raising a family in conservative, homogenous Utah.  I remember that  I was attracted to my wife partly because she was a “California girl,” and I thought that California girls were exciting and different.   I think that moving to California in 1994 was, in part, a conscious move on my part to expand my horizons and to succeed in the “real world.”

Since being sent my friend’s picture, I’ve been pondering this ongoing transition in my life.  Being surrounded by a little bit of everything here in Southern California, and now being in a profession that demands open-mindedness, it is quite something to me that I have come so far.  I find that I can be comfortable in many environments with many different types of people.  What is changing within me?

I recognize that humanity can be open-minded without spirituality, much less a belief in God.  I am grateful for such open-minded people in many lands doing so many good deeds out of the goodness of their hearts and their desire to help others. They are, for the most part, an inspiration to me. 

But for me, I have adopted a paradigm, a belief system if you will, that springs from a spiritual understanding.  I consider that I am no better and no worse than anybody else on the planet.  More importantly, I truly believe that God is no respecter of persons; that He loves everyone equally. 

I believe that He sees me and all of humanity as His children, and as a perfect loving parent, He loves every one of those children, no matter their station in life.  As a parent myself, I care for my four children.  I have tried to love them as best I could, whether they’ve made good or bad choices.  He does that perfectly.

If He loves everyone the same, how can I be better or worse than anybody else?  Should I consider myself worse than my brother Tom whose six children are all active members of the Church?  Should I consider myself better than him because I have a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree and he doesn’t?   Does God love me less than people with gifted intellects and talents, or less than LDS Church leaders?  Does God love me more than the refugee escaping from war and bloodshed, or more than the man asking for a handout on the off-ramp or on-ramp of the freeway?  Is it possible that God loves me more than my newly-tattooed friend who is gay and is HIV-positive?

NO!  And if He doesn’t consider me better or worse, and He respects all humanity equally, why shouldn’t I do the same? 

I believe that relationships are either horizontal or vertical.  I have come to the conclusion that by making one’s relationship vertical—where there is a better and a worse, a higher and a lower—we physically distance ourselves, or emotionally distance ourselves from one another.  I believe we do that because of anxiety or fear we have of the “other” person, either consciously or subconsciously.  We do not understand “them” and don’t want to.  We do not feel comfortable being vulnerable with “them.”  It is easier to be judgmental and keep our distance so that we don’t have to engage with “them.”  I would propose this to be one of the main reasons why there is war and bloodshed all over God’s earth, why there is prejudice and bigotry, why there has always been a lot of unneeded pain and suffering in the world. 

By working to make one’s relationships more horizontal through surrendering our preconceived notions and being vulnerable—no easy thing to do, to be sure—we can experience great understanding, great humility, great caring, great empathy.  It is becoming quite freeing for me to begin to lose the chains of judgment.  And while I believe that there are some really bad people on the earth, I must be prudent in my judgments of them.

Asking understanding of those who read this blog who do not come from my LDS spiritual orientation, I believe that Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer,  descended below all things in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the Cross at Calvary, so that He might have a more horizontal relationship with us, even though He is God.  I believe that because He took upon himself flesh and dwelt among us, He perfectly knows our pain, our sorrows, our fears, our anxieties.  And again, if He achieved and possesses perfect love and understanding, if He loves people equally, no matter how good or how terrible, rich or poor, black or white, gay or straight, why shouldn’t I attempt to do so as well if I’m trying to be like Him?

I am nowhere near where I ultimately want to end up in this regard.  My journey is full of missteps and judgments.  But, as my blog title indicates, I am in transition.  I am trying to let go.

RESTORING AND REPAIRING

In this posting, I want to briefly discuss a behavior that when used really helps restore relationships, especially with those closest to us.   Not only have I advised clients to consider this, but I have been fairly successful in implementing this behavior in my own relationships.  And while it is initially hard to do—seemingly impossible--when done consistently over a period of time, it yields great results for both individuals.   In a follow-up posting, I will reprint an excellent article I found to help in repairing relationships through forgiveness.

The Emotional Tsunami

When the other person in the relationship does something that upsets us, or says something to us that could be construed as attacking, disrespectful, or does or doesn’t do something that we wanted or didn’t want them to do, our natural response is to experience seemingly overwhelming negative feelings.  We begin to lash out at them verbally or punish them behaviorally.  We emotionally unload on them, often bringing up similar experiences in the past to justify our words and actions. We use qualifiers like “you always” or “you never.”   We feel completely justified in doing so because our perception is that they have been insensitive, or they have been cruel, or they are just plain wrong. 

It should be no surprise that at this point the other person feels “attacked” and becomes defensive.  They feel the need to justify their words or actions, and will likely “counter attack” using similar situations from the past and using strong words and the same qualifiers just used on them.   

Soon, the back and forth escalates and the words and actions become heated, exaggerated, and ugly.   Our faces become distorted and reddened.  We may begin shaking.  At some point, completely exasperated, one or both of the individuals finally breaks down in tears, or punches a hole in a door or wall, or slams the door on the way to their room or out of the home; that is, if the situation has not become violent.   The aftermath is usually miserable and can be full of thoughts of revenge, justifying thoughts and actions, or uncontrollable weeping.  Both people are in a bad place.

Sadly, this sometimes occurs in the presence, or at least in the ear shot, of our children—not to mention other adults who may be in the house, or neighbors.  But all perspective has been lost in the heat of the battle and sensitivity to our surroundings has disappeared.

Not all situations follow this scenario, but some do.  These kinds of interactions can regretfully become routine, with both individuals holding the other responsible for drawing them into the emotional “tornado” vortex.  They become very sensitive to the words or behaviors of the other, looking for something to light their short fuse.  They remember the hurtful feelings, words, and behaviors and will use them against the other person in the future.

Such an all too familiar tsunami scenario had its beginnings with one individual in the relationship feeling upset, attacked, disrespected or misunderstood.   To quote renowned therapist Marcia Ullett, “feelings aren’t facts; they’re just feelings.”  Allowing the feelings can become our default setting and coping mechanism when dealing with special others.  Often, rather than questioning the feeling, we simply surrender to the oncoming wave and let it wash over us.

What I really try to do myself and advise others to do is to “pull back” in the moment when we feel the wave, and not say anything, if only for a very brief period of time.  This “pull back” moment is to temporarily stop the wave from crashing down.  It can be accomplished by physically taking a couple of deep breaths, but mentally or cognitively questioning what is happening.  It can be simply asking ourselves, “does the other person really want to hurt me, based upon their behavior earlier in the day or the week?”  Or “is there something going on in my life or the other’s life right now that is upsetting me or them or putting me or them on edge emotionally?”  Or “is it possible that I have misunderstood or don’t know the whole story?”

Such cognitive pauses in the moment can make a world of difference because we often will realize that the issue may be with us or that we may be making a proverbial mountain out of a mole hill.  The pauses allow us time to just think rather that to just feel.  The pauses help to diffuse potentially emotional land mines that can blast both people to emotional bits.  Such pauses done over time empower us to not be reactionary but to keep the power we would normally surrender to the person who has triggered us.  The pauses send a strong message to the loved one that we are attempting to change, and usually but not necessarily always, allows them to respond in a restorative manner to us.

As stated previously, at first blush this cognitive pause may seem near impossible to do.  But from my personal experience and the experiences of others I’ve worked with, it can be done!  Indeed, it is transformational.  It takes a lot of work and self-awareness, and sometimes failing or falling short of what we would liked to have said or done.   But that is okay.   Successes build on themselves. 

We cannot control others or dictate what they say or do.  But we can control ourselves and dictate what we say or do.  We can keep the power and not give it to another.  And the feeling of not blowing up or emotionally vomiting on our loved one is a fantastic feeling!

A Daughter's Work on Shame

For those who have recently read my blog, you will remember a post about my desire to investigate my shame.  That work continues.  Also, many of you who know me will know that I have a hard time believing in coincidences.  To find out that my #2 daughter Emily is presently on her own journey of investigating her shame, just as my #1 son BJ (Robert) is presently on his journey to addiction recovery, IS NO COINCIDENCE!  

Just as I decided to include my son's thoughts about addiction, I feel impressed to likewise include Emily's recent blogpost about her "awakening" to the shame that has governed her life.  It made me feel privileged to have her as a daughter (I am grateful for all of my children) and for her vulnerability to share her struggles with the world. I hope this can in some way be of benefit to you. 

Emily's Awakening: Part 1

    As many of you know, I am not one to shy away from talking about my struggles with anxiety and depression. I’m always glad to talk to someone who has dealt with similar issues, so I figure it’s helpful to others, not just therapeutic to me, to share my experiences. I also think society as a whole needs to suck it up and start being comfortable dealing with mental and emotional health issues, just like it is with medical issues. We shouldn’t feel embarrassed to acknowledge that we struggle with anxiety any more than we should feel ashamed to tell others we have high blood pressure. Privacy I can understand. But shame, never.

    Over the course of my adult life, I’ve sought help through psychotherapy a number of times. I started in college, my freshman year, when I was having a really hard time making the transition. I also sought help on my mission, when I was in Texas, waiting for my visa to allow me to go to Venezuela (which never happened but that’s another story.) The anxiety was so bad, that it was all I could do to put one foot in front of each other as we’d walk the streets near UNT. It took me six months and a transfer to Florida (and the subsequent sunshine and friendlier folk) to feel slightly normal again. The commonality of these and other events in my life that caused me to seek professional help is that they all brought on anxiety and depression.

    If you’ve ever experienced either, and maybe you didn’t even know that’s what it was, you’ll know what I’m talking about: The feeling of nameless but impending doom; The tightening of the chest; The aching pain of nausea in your stomach; The numbness; The feeling of walking through water; the despair. The complete and total despair—that no one understands; that God has abandoned you; that you’ll never feel good again; that you are going insane.

    In my time in therapy, I’ve figured out that a lot of my anxiety comes from an irrational, though deeply rooted fear that I am not worthy of love. Or, to put it another way, I am not a good ______ and therefore not worthy of love. So all my life I’ve tried to be a good daughter, a good student, a good missionary, and now, a good mother.

    So now, here I am, the mother of four under four, and my life is filled with stress. And I get angry. Very angry. All the time. In fact, it was only recently in therapy that I figured out that the anger is almost constant because I am almost always anxious. It’s not the crippling anxiety I felt on my mission; it’s not anxiety attacks that come and go; it’s more of a baseline anxiety that simmers just below the surface and boils over anytime I get provoked. And living with toddlers is, in case you didn’t know, very provoking. So I lose my temper, I do something I regret, and then fall into the pit of shame and despair over how terrible a mother I am. One time, it got so bad that I had to put all the kids in their beds, for their own protection, and then had to talk myself out of taking the pile of sleeping pills I held in my hand. (Google helped. You can’t kill yourself with 12 sleeping pills. You can only make yourself violently ill.) At any rate, that’s the depth of the pit of shame and despair.

    Several weeks ago, when I was telling my therapist about this incident, I was saying something like, “I used to be such a good mother! With Elizabeth, I was such a good mother! Now I’m a monster!” followed by a lot of sobbing. But then I stopped as I thought about what I’d just said. Wait a minute. I was a good mother? That sounds … actually … really prideful. And that’s when it hit me. I wasn’t a good mother when it was just me and Elizabeth. I was just a mother with more time and more resources. Now that I have the triplets, I am still a mother, but with less time and less resources. OH. MY. GOSH. You mean, all my accomplishments, all the things in my life that make me feel like I’m so awesome … THEY DON’T MAKE ME A “GOOD” PERSON!??!?! I just am!?!??!?!?!? I. JUST. AM! It’s ironic, but it took me looking at all my successes, not my failures, to realize that they do NOT define me! Think about it. I graduated from college with honors. Does that make me a “good” person? NO! It means I made good choices, yes. But it doesn’t increase my worth in any way. I lost my temper and yelled at my daughter. Does that make me a “bad” mom? NO! It means I made a bad choice, yes. But it doesn’t have to throw me into the pit of shame and despair, because, it doesn’t take away from my self-worth!

    Another way of looking at it is through the Atonement—the sacrifice Jesus Christ made for us. God loves us—every last sinner of us—and his love doesn’t depend on how “good” or “bad” we are. He loves us. Period. End of sentence. And by falling into the pit of shame and despair, I was only telling myself, “You are BAD. You can NEVER change. You are not worthy of God’s love.” What the WHAT?! That’s not true! That’s a LIE! Jesus gave his life and suffered for our bad mistakes—our sins—so that we can change and improve and so we’ll have the chance to make our actions match the incredible worth we ALREADY HAVE.

    Sitting in the therapy session, figuring all this out, I felt a physical weight lifted off my shoulders. And it didn’t end there. When I got home and I, once again, got angry and lost my temper, I didn’t fall into The Pit. I took a step back, saw my mistake for what it was—something wrong I did, not something bad I was—and could move forward from there. Incredible.

    This, my friends, was an awakening. It has set me free.

STAYING WITHIN EMOTIONAL REACH

I'm the apple of her eye!

On Sunday, my wife Ann and I will celebrate 34 years of marriage.  In this day and age, that is an accomplishment I suppose.  But honestly, divorce while always an option never has seemed to be the way to ultimately deal with problems between us.

I can say that through the years, I have assimilated some of Ann’s personal and gender characteristics and she likewise has assimilated some of mine.  Perhaps more importantly from the standpoint of the couple’s therapy that I do routinely these days, she has been working on her own personal issues while at the same time I have been working on my own.  What that has served to accomplish is to keep us within emotional reach of one another.  What I mean by that is she has grown more secure in herself through the years while I have grown more secure in myself in those years, and that growth has been fairly equivalent.

Based upon my research and my clinical experience, when one partner in a relationship goes forward or backward in a significant way in their emotional life and their partner does not simultaneously respond in like manner, there are problems.  For example, if a partner gets caught up in an addiction, there is a regression in his or her emotional life, while at the same time, their partner usually has maintained and not regressed.  That’s a problem.  That presents a widening gap in their emotional reach of one another.  Another example might be a partner who has an exciting, fulfilling job while the other has a repetitive, non-stimulating life at home.  (Read my daughter’s example of my hypothesis in my recent blog entry of her blog post.)  That’s a problem.  That also likely causes a widening gap in their emotional reach.

As I state often in my clinical experience, when we go into a partner relationship, we enter at the level of our dysfunction.  In other words, we find and connect with someone who is as similarly “messed up” as we are (or aren’t).  We fall in love with someone who is within emotional reach of us.  Harville Hendrix, who has written extensively about finding our “Imago,” (Greek for our “image”— our likeness) is stating what I just wrote but in a different way.  We enter into relationships with similar “baggage” from our families of origin and our life experiences (nurture), and who we are (nature.)  If partners aren’t similarly “messed up,” the relationship will likely not last.

Icy surroundings, warm hearts

But then, unless a couple’s emotional lives remain somewhat close as the years pass, their relationship will likely be in peril and likely will not last.  Having read this hypothesis, I imagine my daughter might think that her relationship with my son-in-law might be doomed.  That is not necessarily so.  If both are really concerned about the other and each is willing to be humble and open to making changes in themselves, not expecting the other to change before they do, then they likely will stay within emotional reach of one another.  I pretty sure that will be the case with my daughter and her good husband who is a wonderful, humble man, and whom I am proud to have as a son-in-law. 

I know that Ann really cares for me on a deep level as I care deeply for her, but we both humbly realize that we each have issues and we try to work on them constantly.  In order for our marriage to flourish—that third entity in our partnership beyond her and me—, each entity has to “take care of their own side of the street.”  As we do so, the emotional distance between us is relatively small and we can deal with the resulting bumps in the road as they occur.

To be fully transparent, we have not always cleaned our own sides of the street.  In the past we looked outwardly to the other, to some degree, to meet our emotional needs.  And that occasionally surfaces even now, but when our partnership was wobbly in the past during challenges in child rearing, we got into therapy and we BOTH started working on our own “stuff,” and we continue to do so.  As a consequence, we have grown, and we have grown more or less at the same rate.  That small emotional distance between us has allowed us to grow together as a couple!

We sometimes "put on the dog"

Longevity in marriages does not necessarily mean that all is well and blissful.  For every one that is, there are as many or more that are not.  Couples can often merely tolerate one another because there is little emotional connection; they are not within emotional reach of one each other.  Those partners will often look to fulfill emotional needs outside of their relationship because there is so precious little within it.

So as I approach April 22, I have a huge smile on my face!  I have never been happier and more in love than I am right now at this time of my life.  My marriage just keeps getting better because there is emotional connection and passion.  My wife is my best friend, my confidant, my lover.  I cannot wait to be around her and love living life with her.  And what is most wondrous about this relationship is that the doctrine of my Church dictates it can last beyond death.  It can last forever; there is no “‘til death do you part.”  Why wouldn’t I want this blissful experience to go on indefinitely?

I am working hard on what I can control—myself, and on our marriage so that the transition from mortality to eternity will be natural.   HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO ME!

"You are my lover, you're my best friend, you're in my soul"